Category: uncatogarizable

The month of February brought with it white cotton-wool that melts. Having never seen snowfall, I was excited. It was white and soft and pleaded to be walked in. I ambled for hours in the fluff, uncertain and uncaring about pavements and pedestrian pathways enjoying the silence only snow can bring; it muffled every thought. The trees dressed in diamonds, swayed to the wind and I could no longer see my beloved mountains, usually so near. Maybe they’d gone to get themselves a cup of sunshine. My fingertips were cold. My heart was warm. It was a beautiful day, and I was done with all of it by nightfall.

I was well into my first week of February and hadn’t landed a job. Distressed, I would get bundle up and go out in the snow to Work BC offices and the Vancouver Public Library to look at job white papers, spending that 9 to 5 applying to positions, fine-tuning my resume and generally trying to occupy myself fruitfully. I must have walked in to at least ten recruitment agencies only to be politely thrown out by eight. And, I’ll be honest; it gets frustrating after just three days. The snow, the damp cold, no one to really talk to or hang out with and looking for a paycheck while eating into your savings is not a situation for the faint of heart. It is then when you need to keep that chin up and act like a frog in the well and end up applying for an accelerated course at a university to distract you! The course ran for six intensive, enjoyable, diverse and fruitful days. I added more credentials to my resume and made more acquaintances in my West coast life. As the course ended, I moved back into inconspicuousness. My thoughts were consumed with HR concepts and how I would apply them in a sales job, given that those were more readily available. To add insult to injury, I had moved.

Having spent my initial days at possibly the best locale in Vancouver, the glorious West-End, I knew that moving anywhere would have been a step down. I simply hadn’t factored in a DIVE down to ‘am I in prison, what did I do?’ land. My next AirBnB was a disaster and I had booked it for a month and then some! It was bare, except for a single bed with a blue coverlet. I shared that space with an older Chinese woman who only spoke in mandarin, did not get out of the house and who still managed to get emotional towards me at the end of her stay there. How do I know that? Two words, One App: Google Translate. The third room saw a series of guests: the first gentleman, presumably Chinese. He was nice enough, and then of course, there was the middle aged guy who was allergic to wearing shirts or closing doors, his room’s or the bathroom’s and it wasn’t a pretty sight. Then there was the girl who had eloped with an Indian gentleman during a trip to India and was very keen for me to tell her about the Indian male psyche. And I would’ve told her too, if only I knew! Next, a polish hunk moved in! And as divine timing would have it, two hours later, I moved back to the West End.

I call this post Feeble February because the month was so success-weak that I had to double up my emotional strength to get through it. I was glad that it was only 28 days long! I was often reminded that I’d only been here 45 days, and my brain would quip, ‘45 days already?!’ The month saw effort from my end, getting out when I could be sleeping in, walking for hours to offices and talking to strangers to land a job without looking desperate but I saw no tangible results.